Architecture Work P.C. Blog

Architectural designing 1

I’m often asked how does an architect goes about designing. This would apply to almost anything in the greater design world as we don’t just design structures. In any event it’s a great question.

All design exercises, from my point of view and training over many years, starts with a statement of the problem – “I need a “such and such”, with this much “this and that”...budgets come later. This impliesthat the need for a “such and such” is already known and the “this and that” likewise already identified.

Rarely do problems have this much definition beforehand, unless something is just plain broken & needs to be repaired. So the first place to start is the most simple of statements, like... “I want you to design me a house (or a building)”. From this statement follow the usual questions from me, of programming -rooms, sizes of rooms, types of rooms and write this all down to create a “wish list”. Once the list is considered complete, we can deduce the approximate size of the structure with some basic math. Taking this newly estimated physical size of the project, the budget can be roughly estimated using comparable budgets from similar projects and again, some more basic math and we have a “number”. Not terribly complicated yet but this is just the very beginning as most clients don’t like the first number. I, however, like the first number because it’s a place to start and has a rational basis for its creation. Note that having this rational “first number” as a template, allows us to start manipulating the “wish list” parameters in order to find the right balance of size (cost) and program (project description).